This section of Route 9 (Belmont Street), between Shrewsbury Street and Lake Avenue, forms a first impression for those traveling into the city from the Shrewsbury side of Lake Quinsigamond.

The area's blight of the 1960s has been replaced by businesses that support nearby UMass Memorial Medical Center, which had its beginnings in 1974 when the medical school opened here. The medical business proved profitable enough to improve this approach to the city, with the impressive view of the Biotech Park beyond the expanded medical center. But there are still, more than 40 years later, some empty storefronts and vacant office buildings.

It wasn't always so for the “Worcester Turnpike,” a byway that was established in 1810 and, though it remained a main route between Worcester and Boston, was abandoned as a profit-making venture by private turnpike owners and sometimes lost traffic to nearby trolleys and trains. Today, millions of cars travel Belmont Street from the city toward UMass Memorial, the Biotech Park, Shrewsbury shopping venues and beyond.